Back in August, I had the awesome chance to shoot with Kari Autumn again. She had brought along a couple of headpieces of Black Unicorn and wanted to do some simple fantasy/fashion portraits with them. The idea itself was to keep really simple and shoot it in the city of Den Bosch.

The Looks

Kari had four difference Black Unicorn headpieces and combined with the various dresses she already had, it was very easy to plan the look for the shoot. All we had to do is to get a make-up artist on board, to mix and match the dresses with the headpieces and, we were ready to shoot. The style we really went for was a good mix of fantasy and fashion, with a good balance between both of the styles.

The Locations

Since I've only been to Den Bosch once before, I wasn't entirely sure if that would work out well, fashion shoots don't tend to mesh with most city aesthetics. That being said, it turned out I'm completely wrong and Den Bosch has quite a bunch of hidden gems in terms of shooting locations.

Due to us not having sought out the locations to shoot beforehand though, we had to improvise on the spot. So between every scene we shot, Kari and Alana, the make-up artist, would go back to her place and I would scout out the next location in the city. Then we would meet there and repeat the same thing. It ended up being quite efficient and allowed us to shoot a large variety of scenes at various locations throughout the city itself.

The Shoot / The Gear

The only real tricky part of the shoot was the impovisation necessary to keep a certain look. While Den Bosch looks amazing from the right angles, it also was so varied that only very specific angles allowed for a good looking shot. This meant that I really had to make sure to correctly frame the shot to make sure that the continuity didn't get broken. This was especially important with the second shot in this series (the one with the church like front). If I had just a little bit more to the left, or the right of the image, it would've actually showed the rest of the building, which was made out of modern red bricks.

The actual building in Google Maps.

This is of course just part of the challenge of shooting in the city and it was a lot of fun to try and keep everything looking like a cohesive whole.

As for the gear, it wasn't anything special. I used my Canon 5D Mark III with various sigma and canon lenses. In addition to that, I took a camera flash and umbrella with me to make sure that I could direct the light properly. This was probably the most important part of my gear, since the sun was quite harsh during the day and I had to make sure to balance the light out.

Conclusion

All in all, it just ended up being a fun day of shooting. Days like these remind me that now every single photoshoot needs to be this grand and major project that takes weeks to plan out and requires a huge team to finish. And that sometimes it's just nice to take a breather, keep it simple and just shoot. You might end up with great shots, or with bad shots, but at the same time you're not putting a boat load of stress on yourself to perform.